


Dissection of a Heartbreak

by Ghostie



Category: The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher, True Blood
Genre: Blood Drinking, Bloodplay, Crossover, Drunk Sex, Dubious Consent, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Painplay, Suicidal Thoughts, Unsafe Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-24
Updated: 2015-08-24
Packaged: 2018-04-16 23:35:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4644249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghostie/pseuds/Ghostie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thomas fled Chicago along Interstate 57, aiming to put dozens of bodies and hundreds of miles between himself and the only body that mattered, the one in the lake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dissection of a Heartbreak

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jayjaybe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jayjaybe/gifts).



Thomas fled Chicago along Interstate 57, aiming to put dozens of bodies and hundreds of miles between himself and the only body that mattered, the one in the lake.

He managed to wrap his car around a telephone pole in Texarkana ten hours later and wandered, bleeding and barefoot, to the nearest Greyhound station. After trudging through the fluorescent lights of the parking lot just after midnight, he paused to let the automatic doors of the station struggle open. A rerun of Roseanne was playing on a dingy television in the corner; the one-room station was empty except for a middle-aged attendant with a nametag that read Cheryl-Ann who was flipping through a faded copy of _People_ behind the counter when Thomas walked in.

“Hey,” he said.

She glanced at him and blinked twice, letting the magazine fall out of her hands. “Can I help you?”

He noticed the increased beating of her heart and the flush of blood suffusing the arteries in her cheeks and neck in some far away part of his head. He could suck her dry, leave the body in the parking lot. No one would know. “When does the next bus south leave?” He didn’t bother to smile.

She smiled enough for the both of them, though it looked eerie paired with the dazed expression in her eyes. “Shreveport, twenty minutes.”

Thomas nodded and went over to one of the rusted blue passenger benches to wait. When the bus arrived he boarded it, without a ticket and without killing Cheryl-Ann. He figured that was charitable of him, or as much as the universe could expect that week. Of course, Harry would have-

Thomas felt his throat close over and swallowed roughly. It didn’t matter, _he_ didn’t matter.

He busied himself with a thorough contemplation of the succession of broken towns and neon strip malls that flashed by the bus window for the rest of the ride. If any of the other passengers wondered why he was covered in blood, some of it fresh and pale red, some darker and older, no one said anything.

***

There were no more buses until the morning, and Thomas’ skin itched too much to sit still in the station, replete with broken AC and a hellish serenade of cicada song creeping in through the broken windows. He wandered instead, feeling the demon crawling up through his stomach, scratching at the inside of his ribcage, begging to be let out. Women, and some men, kept turning, staring, licking their lips as he walked by. It should have made him feel in control. It didn’t.

He finally found an open bar, its name lit up in blazing neon red. _Fangtasia._ He couldn’t help but laugh; no one was subtle in the south, least of all the Red Court. He went in anyway; there was something alluring about being surrounded by monsters even crueler and colder than he was.

The bar was everything he expected: pulsing red lights, goth costumes, decanters of blood disguised as art pieces behind the bar. It was the sort of obvious excess that Lara would have scoffed at, and Thomas rarely would have bothered with. But the bar was well stocked and that was all that mattered at the moment.

As he moved towards an empty stool a woman in a black and red corset slid into his path. Even in the cacophony of red and yellow strobe lights Thomas could tell that her cheeks were well accustomed to cloaking fangs. She was old, perhaps older than him. Worthy of respect.

Thomas found he didn’t give a damn.

“Have you come to speak with the Sheriff?” she asked.

He turned to face her, widened his eyes. “No. I came for a fucking martini.”

She pursed her lips and walked away; he didn’t bother to see where she went. He had more important things to do.

Unfortunately, the sting of his first martini didn’t fill the part of him that was raw and howling, nor did the second or the third. The alcohol was ice skimming the surface of a frozen pond; there were depths of suffocating water that roiled beneath it, filled with things Thomas couldn’t name and didn’t want to think about.

He ordered another drink, ignoring the scowl of the bartender.

He felt a presence behind him and saw a shadow fall over the bar to his left. “I haven’t seen an incubus three sheets to the wind since prohibition,” a voice purred, close to his ear. It was deep, a man’s voice. It reminded Thomas of river water on gravel; he felt the hairs on his spine stand at attention.

Thomas flopped an elbow down on the bar and turned to look up at the newcomer. The other man was tall, taller even than him. He had the pallid complexion and bruised eyes of a red court vampire but his hair was golden instead of the usual black. Thomas raised an eyebrow. “Then you don’t get out much, do you?”

The other man made a non-committal noise and slid onto the bar stool next to Thomas. “I get out enough, Mr. Raith. You caused quite a stir in the Yucatan.” His eyes glinted and he leaned closer, so that his speech caused the hairs on Thomas’s neck to prickle. “Some might consider you to be behind enemy lines.”

Thomas suddenly wished he’d either three more martinis or three fewer; he wasn’t sure which. It was still too soon and too raw: screams echoing through the jungle, magic burning through the sky, and most of all, blood. So much blood. He closed his eyes and took another swig of his martini. “What of it? Looks like you made it out alive.”

The man shrugged. “Not all of the Court hailed from Mexico. Still, thousands are dead at your hand.”

“Are you going to kill me, then?” Thomas asked. He realized he wasn’t terribly concerned by the prospect, which was in and of itself concerning.

“I’d planned on offering you a drink, actually.” He chuckled slightly. “The Southern lords were no friends of mine. I’m called Eric, by the way.” He offered Thomas his hand; through the fog of the alcohol Thomas realized he was meant to shake it. He did so clumsily; Eric’s skin was cool beneath his fingers.

They drank in silence; Thomas tossed back drink after drink, only tangentially aware of Eric beside him. He made a frustrated sound when he finished one drink and found none to replace it. At a loss, he looked around for the bartender only to realize that the neon lights had been turned off and the bar was empty save for Eric, who was watching him with a curious expression on his face. “What?”

“You don’t seem particularly pleased with your victory.”

Had it been a victory? He was alive, Maggie was alive, but… “A lot of people died,” he said.

Eric raised an eyebrow. “A vampire with a bleeding heart is a rare thing indeed.”

But it wasn’t his heart that was bleeding, wasn’t his blood on the deck, wasn’t his blood sinking and diffusing into the depths of a cold, still lake. He said as much to Eric.

“You should not let yourself get caught up in human lives,” Eric chided. “Their deaths should amuse, not hurt.”

“They do amuse,” he slurred out. “Drained a dozen just between Chicago and Memphis, just for the fun of it.” He realized he couldn’t remember all of them, their faces or their names or the way the sounded when they died. It all blurred together, skin and sighs, and worst of all he couldn’t bring himself to care.

Harry would have cared. Harry cared so much; he would have dutifully remembered and recorded each of the girls’ names. He would have born the bad news to their mothers and boyfriends and children, let them scream and sob their anguish in his face. All out of some thrice-damned sense of compassion. If only Harry had cared less. But then, Thomas supposed, he would not have been Harry.

He realized Eric was watching him with a more perceptive eye than he would’ve liked. “I drained all of them. They’re all dead,” he repeated.

Eric nodded seriously. “Would you like another to drain? A gift from one heartless killer to another?” A wink, and suddenly Thomas’s mouth was dry and he was acutely aware of the way Eric was sitting, arms trapping him against the bar, mere inches between their faces.

“No,” he said slowly. “That’s not what I want.” His Hunger waited two beats of silence before making its move, slamming up against the other man, circling him in a fog of white that only Thomas could see.

Thomas’ Hunger wasn’t just ineffectual against a Red Court noble of Eric’s age; it was dangerously rude. It would have been enough to cause a diplomatic incident that would start with his body delivered headless to the Raith compound and would end god knows where. And yet Eric didn’t look angry. Thomas knew the look on his face; he’d seen it practically every day of his life since he’d killed his first victim. Lust.

“Oh _käraste_ ,” Eric murmured. And suddenly Thomas felt himself lifted off the ground and slammed onto the bar counter. His head was spinning; he realized that both of his arms were pinned beneath one of Eric’s forearms while Eric’s other arm lay over his neck, vibrating with Thomas’s rabbiting heartbeat. He felt like he was falling or drowning or flying; the heady weight of Eric’s skin against his own was the only thing anchoring him to the earth.

Eric, for his part, looked like a statue. The only hint at something roiling beneath the surface was the tension in the muscles of his hands and his blown pupils, cast red in the dim light from the bar. “Do you want pain?” he finally asked.

Thomas looked down at his hands and saw that beneath the smattering of his own blood from the car accident he could still see darker blood staining through. He’d sunk to his knees on the deck of the boat, hands falling into the drying puddle, and hadn’t washed his hands since. “I want to bleed,” he gritted out. Dilute it, join with it, or wash it away- he was too drunk to know which, or to bring himself to care.

And Eric smiled, and his teeth were so white that the demon in Thomas snarled with approval and _want._ It was all he could do to cling to Eric’s chest as the other man buried a hand in his hair and thrust Thomas’s head back so that his neck was bared as an offering, white like a pillar of marble.

He knew intellectually Eric had no reason to feed from him- Eric could no more glean sustenance from his than Thomas could sire a child with a Red Court woman- and yet there were plenty of reasons other than procreation for having sex.

The first brush of teeth was ice, the first plunge of fangs into skin burned. The spurt of blood, sped by the suckling of Eric’s lips, rushed down Thomas’ neck to pool in the hollow if his clavicle. It felt almost like the breaking of a dam or an exhale after a long time spent underwater; even as a tremor of dizziness pulsed in his head it felt like he could finally breathe again.

He was dimly aware that he was keening, high and breathy, and that the hand not snared in his hair was moving lower, ripping through his bloodstained shirt and pants, peeling the clothing from his body so that he lay naked in a pile of shredded fabric on the bar.

Meanwhile the blood was still coursing from his neck, down his pale chest. Rivulets slipped over his nipples; Eric chased them with his tongue, lapping at every drop, swirling over his skin as Thomas fought to breathe.

Some part of him realized that this was vital blood he was losing, this was dangerous, deadly even- but that part was far away. The giddy lightness of blood loss felt freeing, as if Eric had managed to suck all of Thomas’s pain and guilt and grief out of his veins like venom from a snakebite.

Eric’s hand moved lower, grazing over the fluttering of Thomas’ abdomen before wrapping around his cock. Thomas moaned and realized that he was desperately hard. “I need- I-“

And then Eric was shushing him, murmuring soft nothings, slinging his legs up over his shoulders, manhandling him into position. Thomas, fully naked, looked up at Eric, who was fully clothed and untouched save for a mess of pale red blood over his chin and shirt. Eric removed his hands from Thomas’ body, though Thomas didn’t bother to move his arms from where they lay limply above his head. He couldn’t think of anywhere else to put them.

Eric, in the middle of unzipping his fly, suddenly paused. “Are you sure you want this, little one?”

It was an offering of another way out of this battle they were fighting, a chance to leave in peace and treat the wounds on his body. But Thomas, who had fought his way through hell to kill the gods in their own temple, was not about to surrender now. “Eric,” he snarled, “ _fuck me._ ”

Eric didn’t ask again. Pants out of the way, he wrapped his hands around the ivory skin of Thomas’ thighs and sank into him in a single fluid motion. There was no lube, no preparation, and Thomas knew if he survived this it would hurt like hell.

Eric set a brutal pace, bending down so that he could still lick the blood flowing sluggishly from Thomas’ neck. He welcomed it, tears on his cheeks and lips.

Some park part of him wanted the blood and the pain not simply to wash Harry’s blood away, but also to punish his brother. To do something that would hurt Harry if he were ever to know about it, something that would make Harry’s heart clench and flip and tear itself apart. Something like a puddle of blood on the deck of a boat, something like leaving Thomas alone. But of course Harry would never know how Thomas had hurt himself because Harry was _dead-_

With the little strength he had left Thomas reached up and pulled Eric into him, capturing his mouth in a searing kiss.

The pressure in his cock warred with the dark spots in his vision; as he came he felt himself fading, until everything went black.

***

Thomas woke to soft velvet sheets and a hammering pain in his lower body, matched counterpoint by an ache in his neck. He reached up to find that the latter was neatly bandaged. Time would see to the former, he supposed.

“The sun rose two hours ago.”

Looking up, Thomas saw that he was in a small bedroom. Eric lounging on the other side of the bed, paging through a magazine.

His throat felt dry. “I should go.”

Eric watched him as he stood and shuffled like an old man to the door. He opened it, looking out at the empty bar beyond.

“I doubt you’ll take my advice,” Eric suddenly called out, “but I suggest to you anyway: forget about the human. Leave your guilt behind; purge yourself of this pain you’re carrying.”

“Why?” Thomas mumbled through the haze of his hangover, “Because they’re all cattle? Useless and meaningless as anything except food? Not worth being mourned?”

Eric nodded amiably. “All of those things. And because,” he paused. “Because I would not wish to see you destroy yourself, Thomas.”

Thomas jerked his eyes open; it was the first indication he had that the other man knew his given name.

Eric met his eyes and continued. “Men like the one you lost bear the weight of the world on their shoulders, and it drives them to the ground. Men like us… men like us survive.”

To Thomas’ surprise it was Eric who looked away first. Thomas stood in the darkness, felt the ache in his body, and shut the door behind him.

***

When Thomas stepped off the bus in the Chicago terminal the next day he was dressed in immaculate white, not a thread out of place. He walked to his apartment like nothing had ever hurt him or ever would, in this life or the next. He did not stop by the lake.

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place post-Changes in the Dresdenverse, and at some indeterminate time in the early Truebloodverse. I assume that the Trueblood vampires are closest to the Red Court; pretend that Harry's death curse only killed the Central American branch of the family rather than all of them.
> 
> I was so happy when I saw someone request this pairing; I just had to write it. I got a little bit carried away with the gratuitous Thomas angst, but I hope you like it anyways! Enjoy!


End file.
